JRE

What I think we need is to clarify the status for lapsed initiates. Using the current framework Griselda probably was initiated in her teens (considering her, probably Orlanth / Vinga rather than Ernalda), but stopped paying her tithes, both money and time, and when she arrived in Pavis, with the added problems with Orlanth's cult there, she has not renewed her link with the god. I agree she may feel she cannot rely too much in deities, working mainly on her own. As long as the players agree and are willing to generate their own motivations to adventure, that is a game I really like. Cugel-like, rather than Conan, specially as the rune levels and even devout initiates will be more powerful than the characters. I would say RQ3 was more suitable for this kind of games. My own take is that devout initiates, on their way to Rune levels, are relatively rare, maybe 10-15% of the initiates, though most of the PCs will be there. Others remain as initiates, doing their part but with no further ambitions, and a good number will lapse, usually due to lack of free time, or even excess goods for the temple. So they still attend the high holy day and the Sacred Time ceremonies, but as audience / support rather than actors. In times of need they may be returned to the cult and renew their rune magic, but most of the time they do not have access to it till they renew their status (no POW needed). I would expect each Orlanthi household will make an effort to keep one of each initiate, Orlanth and Ernalda, to keep the blessings and the supoort of the temple, but other members may be free to be less devout. Otherwise we will have huge numbers of people following the god archetypes rather than being people as we know them.

It is not the air that is weak, it is us, weak humans that are part earth and part air, even some fire and water and, whispering, dark. As you get into the air, only those strong in the air rune can be comfortable. Air creatures and those with strong enough air could fly to the moon, if those pesky moon rays and meteors did not shoot them down. It is a divine trial, to fly up the mountains.

I refer mostly to the Hollywood version. In most cases Bond does something that puts the world in danger, and he solves it by killing and bedding (or both) most people he meets. An uncontrolled loose cannon, which he is called several times in the films, certainly not what you want in your dart warriors or your sacred assassins. Seen from the point of view of the other characters, he is just a force of nature changing the world, often in huge ways, from sinking lands to destroying the livelihood of millions of people, most of the time inadvertently, and usually for selfish reasons. Sometimes he reacts to some danger that is not his fault, or disrupts an ancient conspiracy, in most cases getting involved by accident, but often he is the source of the problem he has to solve. And considering the amount of destruction and loss of life, I would say it is clearly transformative.

If Tom is an Orlanth adventurous initiate, and sometimes goes away for some weeks with his strange friends, but in the process either a) some menace to the clan is solved or b) they bring back loot or some other resource that benefits the clan, he will be considered as a good Adventurous type, and indeed people will call for him when any stranger approaches. But if he is mostly a Barntar guy, why is he spending so much time with weird folk, rather than his clan mates? He should be helping the barn raisings, the militia practice and his turn at malting, while needling his aunts to find him a wife? Suspicious, suspicious I say. For me it is a matter of social expectations. The expectations for an Adventurous are not the same as for a Barntari. Player characters should be allowed, unless you enjoy the drama and heartache, to have their social place accepted.

One of the strengths of Glorantha is that nobody has the moral high ground, and that certainly applies to Argrath. I remember since the beginning (Dragon Pass in my case) disliking Harrek and rooting for Jar-Eel, though the Bat made it also difficult to support the Lunars. Anything you dislike about Argrath is probably is something you dislike about the Dragon Pass Orlanthi, and that is where the disconnect is, as people accept Argrath is flawed, but they do not want to accept their character's people are flawed as well, which means the character would be similarly flawed. As an aside I consider most Greek gods are less than ideal role models, except for Athena, because most stories we have come from Athens or their colonies, so of course they support her and lambast other deities... I am sure other polis had tales of Athena as a greedy whore. Because that is the way humans are, and Athena becomes a placeholder for Athenians. What Argrath succeeds, and what we have to keep in mind, is that he becomes a placeholder for Dragon Pass Orlanthi. Argrath sources are mostly in game, so that can play a role as well, with the added weight that most Sartarite tribes would find the Telmori genocide or putting the unreliable clans of Furthest under a trusted follower of the king perfectly normal, and expect Mularik to squeeze and exploit first Furthest and then all of Tarsh. So for the narrator those events also show Argrath as a good king, and only later is Mularik's murder whitewashed as putting down a tyrant, another Orlanthi meritorious act. The king had made other meritorious acts, fulfilling his oath and being generous with his followers. It is when you take the whole picture that you see how being an ideal Orlanthi hero can be a government disaster, and Argrath still manages to salvage the situation. Argrath's career spans decades and many difficult choices. And an Orlanthi king has limited agency, so many actions attributed to Argrath was probably done by someone else. Maybe the Telmori massacres was how the Wulfland colonists proved to their neighbours they in the Cinsina that they were on their side, and the Wolfrunners are the troops they tithe to the high king's wars. Maybe he appointed Mularik to Tarsh to get rid of him, or maybe he was blind, as so many rulers have been, to the defects of their friends, till another friend brought it up. And in the conflict between king and friend, kingship won, becoming also a cautionary tale, and surely becoming an example of Orlanthi Rex virtue, as we have simlar tales in the European Middle Ages refering to Arthur and Charlemagne with similar events. I use Dragon Pass Orlanthi rather than Sartarite because I believe that also includes a big portion of Kethaela, the Pol-Joni, with some changes the Tarsh Exiles and will absorb the Fazzurites. That also allows me to have the Ralios Orlanthi similar but different from all that material about Sartar and the existential war against the Lunars, focusing on the Conan the Barbarian tropes, and the noble savage and decadent civilization.

I just realized none of the three are descendants of Kyger Litor, but darkness spirits adopted in her family. This surely happened before they were adopted, and it could well be the reason. Gender and sex of spirits is fluid, but the two apparent males may well have had offspring with KL or her daughters, but they would have no claims on such offspring. The key point for me would be if Xiola Umbar has her own offspring (and with whom). I somehow feel she has none, but instead she nurtures all creatures of darkness. And she is loved back by all in return. Which could be linked to her own secrets.

Just looking at his children, I would say almost everybody and everything wanted to be with Loki. Marvel's Loki has his moments, but is too tame. The same with TV Lucifer. Roger Zelazny has a lot of trickster characters, including Conrad Nomikos / Kallikantzaros to Loki to Sam (Lord of Light), with the plus of showing Buddha as a trickster character for a fake Hindu pantheon, and including a good part of the Amber series characters. Mostly male, however. As I indicated in the Eurmal series, James Bond is a quintessential trickster, with widespread destruction and a license to kill, lie and seduce. Modesty Blaise could be her female analogue, but she is mostly forgotten now. Interesting how he is alternatively shown as a psychopath and a sociopath. In the first season of Fargo, Lorne Malvo acts as a trickster most of the season, doing both good and evil (though it all ends badly) almost at random.

My own proposal for the God Learners dealing with Arkat is that they penned him up in Statham Well, but they could not beat him. Then they broke up the Autarchy, draining it of power and content and learning all they could. After beating the mundane opponents they settled down for a slow siege and destruction of Arkat, but they could not breach into Statham Well. So they set up different structures and manifestations to drain up Arkat's power to keep him trapped. I willingly concede the Slontos College is one of them, and for personal reasons I would pinpoint the Tower of Xud as another. In time, the siege became just an empty tradition, and the different power drains got their own dynamic and heterodox use of the power, marking a sharp departure from the Abiding Book orthodoxy. After the God Learners's fell, the remaining Arkati, fragmented and being their own bitter enemies, tried through all means to open the way to Statham Well, but most knowledge of the time of the Autarchy was lost. When some of them succeeded (possibly many at the same time, from different traditions), IMHO 1616ST, they found Statham Well empty. Arkat somehow escaped in the interim but got broken up in pieces, or escaped by breaking himself up, your choice, possibly in the 1580s or 1590s. You can never keep the Trickster locked down forever, but it would be funny if some of the last chambers of the sunken Slontos Eurmal college flood at that point, with the spike of power enabling the break out, as the destruction of Belintar could have opened the way to Statham Well, if we take him as the last God Learner. That would explain Belintar's distraction in the PoS webcomic.

Arkat followed may religions, but after his (supposed) victory he did not join any pantheon, not even the most recent, the dark, though he apparently remained in good terms with all of them, Malkioni, Orlanthi and trolls, as part of the Empire of Peace. It really looks like a long con that manages to keep the marks (who provided him with most of their magic and secrets) happy after it concludes. From this perspective, he probably also tricked Harmast into ressurrecting him when he was looking for someone else... Faced with a superhero master of Death (and how could he have the Unbreakable Sword when he left Brithos, unless it is his by right, as Deathbringer) and Disorder, maybe the College was the God Learners' way to steal power out of Arkat, so they could cut him down in size, and all the multiple Arkats are the multiple personalities left after they broke him up. Zzabur recognized him, and subtly pushed him out of Brithos to play his fate in the mundane world, possibly as a personification of all Zzabur wanted out of his island. That also took all pleasure out of the island, while Arkat manages to personify all sins, as only the Trickster can.

That makes sense, if you plan to reuse all that great material. I was thinking of some people doing something like Wyrm Footprints did for the Wyrm Footnotes material, but doing it all on a volunteer basis to minimize the discussions that money always brings to the table. I certainly do not have the time or inclination to do so and I do have already my issues, but I remember when it was the only light in the darkness, till its example brought the lightbringers together. I would like others to appreciate that, as well as maybe a different approach to Glorantha.

We had a long campaign in RQ3 where the players were really a bunch of lazy initiates trying to make do while working as little as possible. So only RQ3 initiates and a self taught sorcerer (which is quite underpowered compared to RQG initiates, as Rune magic was one use), and no interest in entering the rat maze of rune levels (90% of my time? That is crazy. 90% of my earnings? That is robbery!). So they traveled around, though they were too laid back and risk averse to be true murder hoboes. It really played as Holiday Genertela, visiting a sizeable part of the continent. It worked really a Jack Vance homage, and it is interesting to see Glorantha as the result of ages of decadence, as well as funny hats and interesting foods. As all long campaigns, there was an accretion of power in high skills and magic trinkets, and they used all their increases in POW in enchantments, so they were quite tough by the end of it. But it was a combat light game. The problem is having players that all agree to the theme.

"Rational" could be the winner in the Fourth Age, after the Abiding Book effort got dispersed in all the God Learner experiments in the Second Age. You could say it is how Zzabur tries to remake Glorantha's mythic landscape without leaving the safety of Brithos. So each time Rationalism raises its head, Arolanit is setting its hooks. Like a reversed Carcosa, it can strike anywhere you have people with the right mental state.

My reply to Eff is that it actually depends on who is asking the question, as their own interaction with the Gods will be colored by their perspective, as in Glorantha that perspective matters. As Jeff says above, most Orlanthi will just ask Orlanth to order his vassal, Heler, but there will be no interaction with Heler. A Heler cultist, no matter how rare they may be, will probably not access Heler the servant of Orlanth (or Orlanth, Heler's master), but will access Heler, the invader of the Sky. The end result will be similar, but the Godtime event linked, and the interaction with the deity will be different, and both should be accesible with the right knowledge. We may say it is subjective, but as they link different Godtime events, they are both true at the same time. That also explains why the same deity can be a minor servant in one area, and a major god in other, depending on what myths, and therefore what parts of the Godtime they can access. That will also limit or expand the magic they can get from worship.

I fully understand the difficulty, but I wonder if it would be possible to do so as volunteer work to get them freely available, at least the parts where you can get an agreement for free use, and skipping the parts where the author / artist does not agree or cannot be found. A lot of work, compounded by scanning and polishing the files. But feasible if the main copyright holders agree and enough volunteers can be found. I would imagine most living authors / artists could be tracked by the different people in this board, as shown with Ian's results with his Pavis work. I would expect that to do it free would be easier than to set-up a payment scheme for all the people involved. In my very small part, I guarantee free use of the one or two pages of mine published in it. I think I am missing only the first issue, but I would need to find the right box. However, as I suppose is the case for most of us, the real problem is time available.

As I said my CA characters are NPC reinforcments. Usually it is an initiate with quite good healing and the PCs take oaths to defend them. I play with only two PCs, so there are usually other minor NPCs around (teamster/drover with the mule team, a hired guard, usually one of the best students of the Humakti, and a manservant for the LM/Issaries writer. The CA initiate is supported by an attendant as well, load carrier and clothes washer (back to the Soap thread, and how hard it is to keep those white robes white). The CA comes usually when it is a temple or clan matter, or if they are going to face disease (when they have to use one of their precious favor cards). When playing "A Tale to Tell" a CA temple guard came with the healer, a bison Waha initiate and Khan son, paying off his debt after a Ressurrection, as all know broo do not respect the white robes. He took his duty to defend the white woman very seriously, and was wounded and diseased but survived. To keep the focus on the players, the bison did not speak with the Lunars, as part of his oath to CA of keeping the peace. They do not slow down combat, as they usually watch for anyone that may need them without acting. They avoid most discussions except to propose non-violent solutions. She befuddles chaos critters if at full MP, and sleeps humans that do not seem too powerful or wicked. So far the players have respected her choice to save those affected by Sleep. A couple even brought ransom, which is better than what happens when hit by an arbalest with poisoned sorcerous bolts. Some sages are quite bloody minded. Never had a CA player, but I have played with similar characters in other games, In our campaign of Warhammer's The Enemy Within, our halfling doctor/apothecary/alchemist was very proud that the only person he had killed was a patient killed by a fumble, and never increased his weapon skill. He tried at the beginning to use a sling, but almost the whole epic campaign his only weapon was a scalpel. He was the party leader and Face, so he had plenty to do in non combat encounters, and in combat he had the time to give orders while cowering behind any available cover, except when someone was wounded. The GM considered that an unarmed, almost unarmoured halfling was ignored while you had a guy in plate armor with a two handed sword swinging around. With some GM support and the right player it is a good character concept.

Returning to soap, I am sure there were plenty of incidental soap manufacture before the writing obsessed Sumerians came into the picture. But what writing allows you to do is to record and then spread a technology. Surely people used ashes and other mordants to treat fibers, which means you can have dyed textiles and leather without a deliberate soap making industry. But you need a deliberate soap making industry to process the wool of 200.000 sheep as mentioned in the Girsu text. I am sure some pre-Dawn clans knew the secret of washing wood with ashes, or even the water leached from certain trees ashes, as the lye content will vary on the tree species and the ground conditions. But it would be a secret, and they would trade their green woolen cloaks, but not how they make them. Others would keep black and white sheep, and make checkered clothes without dyeing. But I was proposing the Dara Happans because they work very well as a written form obsessed urban freaks that may need to process huge amounts of textiles (including washing them). In most cases using soap to wash people came after the practical use, and in between there usually was a period of medicinal and ritual use, probably because those soaps were quite irritant, so good as a show of piety or as an antiseptic, but not something you want on your skin daily, or possibly weekly. Lye soap is extremely cheap and can be produced in most areas with animals, oily plants and wood. A skin friendly soap with nice smell and essential oils is a luxury item that requires quite a bit of Alchemy to produce reliably. Many salt areas in deserts are actually acidic, so it would require a certain trial and error or alchemical knowledge to find the good ones for fat saponification. I am in the invariant god machine field after Time/Compromise, but with the caveat that worshippers and specially heroes can modify and rewire the god machines, incrementally by joining the godhead, and qualitatively, by the right questing. Being nitpicky, I would consider many so called gods within time as only big heroes or magical constructs, till they accept and are accepted by the Compromise, when they become true deities, and invariant. In the old discussions, worshippers and heroes have free will, though heroes usually sacrifice free will for power. Gods in the Compromise have no free will, so they cannot act in new ways, unless someone with will makes them.

It also makes an excellent NPC reinforcement for a small player group. They play themselves and will interfere little with player actions. I usually have them use Sleep only when they are attacked (usually unintelligent animals or beings of Chaos), or the party is really against the wall, as that is bound to create conflict as the sleeping foes are under their protection.

I would be more strict, as Orlanth being associated with Oslira in Tarsh or Holay does not mean Oslira is an associate of Orlanth in Sartar. Or that an Orlanthi near Alkoth will be welcome to worship in an Oslira temple. Those are social aspects, rather than religious, but still important as you cannot worship if you are not allowed in. I use a rule of thumb. If it is likely there will be a small shrine to the associate in the temple, I allow associate worship. Otherwise, no. However if you are doing a globe trotting campaign, then recovering rune magic is more MGF than making it difficult, except when you want to stress the player and the character. Engizi is a sure bet, however.

The problem with the pyre soap theory is that any fire hot enough to turn wood into ash will burn rather than render the fat. Which is also why you do not get soap when you do a barbecue. However if you clean with ashes anything greasy, it becomes gradually more effective, as the alkali in the ash saponifies (turns into soap) the fat, so your washing water washes increasingly better. Ashes from the temple sacrifices surely wash better than any other ash, and soon you may have a secondary business with holy ashes. Most of the soap/detergent is not used for people but clothes, both in manufacturing and later in cleaning. In fact many cloth soaps are irritant to human skin (too much lye), which is one of the resons why clothes washing was a hard and painful work. A good reason to use soap sparingly if you end up with red skin and open sores. However, as the limitating factor in soap manufacture is good quality ash (if you do not have enough chemical alchemical knowledge that you can obtain directly a strong lye), Alkoth may still be the Lunar Soap emporium.

Our Glorantha may vary, but many of my dwarves are actually cleanliness freaks and it is one of their concerns with the Outer world and its dirt, organic matter and bodily fluids. Bring rubber suits, antiseptic baths, gas maks... And ever clean clothes. In this case it was a blood soaking rag for a temple, so trolkin did not spend their time lapping the floor and walls at inappropiate times. A holy ZZ item, turned into a character cleanliness complement, courtesy of an AA entrepeneur.

I would go so far as saying that it was Arkat who identified the cruel enemy god in the Dara Happan Hill of Gold myth as Zorak Zoran, and then quested to make it so, in order to weaken the Emperors and specially the Daysenerus spearmen cult (antecessor of later days Yelmalio) against himself and his Zorak Zorani berserkers. That would be classic Arkat, and it fits. He also placed him in the God's Wall, and suddenly the troll god of boyish rebellion became a powerful fighting god, conqueror of fire and a staunch foe of Chaos, needed both for the fight in Dorastor but also so the Uroxi that came with him from Dragon Pass would be willing to fight along his new army. I suppose XU keeps her secrets, and she still loves her new grown up brother as she loved the burnt out runt. Her brother still needs her, and he can help her better now. But at times ZZ still cries for his sister and she is the only one that can hold his fear away.

Checking a bit, most references loop in a recursive way without finding concrete evidence. The find were a set of clay cylinders with the inscription in Sumerian cuneiform "Fat and ashes." The 23rd century clay tablet describing the soap process, as part of wool manufacture, was found in Girsu, then part of the kingdom of Lagash in the Akkadian empire, though most common sources claim it is also Babylonian. I suppose that as Babylonian priests kept using Sumerian cuneiform script, many old Sumerian inscriptions were initially considered Babylonian, despite the 500-1000 year gap. The clay tablet describes wool washing and dyeing, as if you do not wash the wool of lanolin you cannot dye it. Probably the first washings were made with ashes, that combine "in-situ" with the lanolin to make a soap. What someone in Girsu recorded for the first time was mixing animal fats, in controlled amounts, with wood ash, to systematically wash the wool, more efficient than depending on the varying amounts of lanolin and its reactivity. Apparently Girsu was a big wool industry center, as other records found show 200,000 sheep shorn in a three month period. What we do not know is whether the Sumerians used that soap for washing something beyond the wool, or maybe it was a secret of the wool-makers. Some five hundred years later the Hittites were using soap for ritual purification of priests, and a few centuries later the Egyptians already used soap for many purposes, though textile washing remained the big one. They were the first to record the use of vegetable fats, besides the animal fats. I would expect First Age Orlanthi to wear undyed woolen clothes, as the unwashed wool actually has better water repellency and cold resistance. However, when they contacted the First council, they learnt of the wondrous invention of soap, which the Dara Happans claim was a less known gift of Antirius,as it was not needed while Yelm was in the sky. It was easy to make and allowed them to dye their wool with bright colours, almost as good as the Solars cotton. As it would wash woad very fast, and it was clearly a solar affectation, it did not become common for personal hygiene, but they found out that it was great to stiffen the hair without the rancid smell of tallow. It was Alakoring Dragonbreaker who spread the use of soap among the Orlanthi noble classes, if only to adopt the signs of rulership of other empires. The Westerners discovered soap separately, once again as a byproduct of wool processing, and for some time its use was restricted first to the Zzaburi that discovered it, then the Talari, which probably found it also to be helpful when they had to spend long periods of time near the Horali. Well off Dromali started using it as imitation of the other castes, but in some sects it is considered a caste crime, which means sweat lodges and hitting each other with branches remains a typical Dromali hygiene ritual. Unlike earth, I propose that except for some traditionalist orlanthi clans and people in tree-less areas such as Prax, soap is well known and used in Glorantha. It is fantasy, so let out characters smell nice and avoid diarrhoea.

As I consider Glorantha iron age with a bronze plating, I have no problem with civilized people using soap and watching with an arched eyebrow those woad covered barbarians. The first soap manufacture recorded is from 2200, though there are some soap-like materials dated 2800 B.C., by the Babylonians, and I have no problem giving the Dara Happans first dibs in soap making, specially as you need ashes and they were the kind to burn a lot of things. The Egyptians in the second millennia were the first to use alkaline salts as an alternative to ashes. First it was on textiles and then for medical purposes. It were the Greeks and later the Romans who for some reason did not like soap for personal hygiene, which was another reason of conflict with the Persians, I imagine. Galenus was still in the 2nd century AD trying to get people wash with soad, for medical reasons. The Gauls used soap to spike their hair (animal fat boiled with ashes), as it was better than fat alone, and probably better smelling after a couple of days. It is possible they also used it for other things... You need to wash the wool to get fine textiles from it, so if you have a healthy wool industry, you surely have soap. That does not mean, as the Greeks show, that they use that on themselves, except when ordered by a medic.

Some items we have seen in our games. Self-heating pot (requires MPs, one per minute). They also got a cooling pot. The idea was to make food last longer but due to the short duration the real benefit was introducing Glorantha to the pleasure of cold beer. Durable boots. Walktapus hide that lasts for thousands of key miles. Clearly a Plunder derivative. Ever clean dwarven clothes. There is a Nilmerg in them that cleans and repairs them. Could do other things when ordered by its dwarven masters... The troll towel. A devouring rag they got from some trolls. It is a rag, but it devours anything you absorb or clean. So you can use it to clean yourself up of water, blood, dust, and in a few minutes it can be used again. It devoured only liquids and very fine solids. Adamant point. A small piece of adamant (around 2 mm cube) in a bronze support. Used to mark crystal, metals or just anything. Mostly used for messages and petty vandalism. A misused mostali tool. Several water repellent clothes, secret clan technique weaving a bit of air with the wool. Did not work if fully submerged. Bird call whistles. Why rely on mimicry? Take three different ones and you can develop fairly complex codes. Do not correspond to actual birds, but foreigners cannot be sure.

My second age game had a God Learner spy that was actually a graduate from the Slontos University. A Gloranthan James Bond, creating disorder in the name of order. So yes, I think the God Learners wanted to create the perfect infiltrators, abloe to join almost all quests, capable of overcoming all barriers. And the magic allows that all too well. The main problem I used, mechanically, was that he needed to perform increasingly large disorderly acts to recover his magic. It was ok while he was outside the Empire, but what happens when all those perfectly balanced individuals decide they want to return home (those that did not become dragons, or slave owners, or chaos monks) The GLs forgot the impossible to control and in-built disloyalty, but it worked for a few centuries. I am not sure if we can say the same about our own info gathering establishment. I agree in part with Eric's ideas, but using humans rather than deities. So the God Learners though that was a good idea, and suddenly they were splitting tongues, taking over Fonrit, duping the Kralorelans and even building cities in the middle of a desert. It was Eurmali, rather than Eurmal, but yes, once there were enough of them it was unavoidable the God Learners would fall.